Operation Lark
by OutOfTheEquation
Summary: There was a distinct feeling of opportunity in the air when Sirius Black and James Potter had woken up, and so it was that at precisely 2 PM on the 27th of July that Sirius and James headed off through the streets of London on a sleek, black motorcycle to begin a new operation: Operation Lark.


The streets of London were experiencing an unexpected but welcome lull in traffic when James Potter and Sirius Black slipped out of the Potters' house and drove away on a sleek, black motorcycle affectionately christened 'Absorpoth' by Sirius Black, 'Magnificent Beast' by James Potter, 'Holy Shit She's Fast' by Peter Pettigrew, a long-time friend, 'I'm Not Riding That Thing Ever – And Don't You Dare Make An Innuendo Out Of That James', by Lily Evans, long-time friend and girlfriend of James, and 'That Bloody Death Trap Is Going To Kill All Of Us' by Remus Lupin, long-time friend and boyfriend of Sirius. There had been a distinct feeling of opportunity in the air when Sirius and James had woken up, and they had wasted precious moments of this day already by what should have been careful planning but was better described as three shared packets of crisps, half a bar of chocolate, a litre of coke and the weekly watching of The Rocky Horror Picture Show complete with a disturbing rendition of The Time Warp by Sirius while dressed in leggings and a crop top, and so it was that at precisely 2 PM on the 27th of July that Sirius, dressed in a Spider-Man suit, and James, dressed in a red hoodie because 'Mate, I love you, but I am NOT wearing tights for you', drove through the city, screaming at each other over the wind, laughing like idiots and narrowly avoiding colliding with various stationary objects.

Their first stop was a costume shop, and they drew to a screeching halt in front of the shop thanks to Sirius' accumulated experience of a year of driving almost non-stop, marking the beginning of their badly formulated plans. Sirius easily pulled his helmet off, automatically ran his hand through his hair to flatten it, and was halfway through pulling up the hood of his Spider-Man suit when James appeared from his helmet after a moment of struggling, his already messy hair now standing almost completely on end, making the other boy clutch his sides from laughing so hard.

"Arsehole," James muttered as he handed his helmet to Sirius to be locked onto Absorpoth, only to exclaim, "Come on, let Mission Sirius Is An Idiot begin!"

James took off towards the store, Sirius sprinting after him as he called out, "I thought we were calling it Operation Lark!"

They burst into the shop with all the subtlety of a rampaging bull, earning them various dirty looks, and Sirius in particular received various looks that ranged from amusement to extreme suspicion, but neither boy paid attention as they perused the selection.

"You should wear this one! Channel your inner glam queen!" Sirius called to James much too loudly for the enclosed shop, a neon pink sequined bathing suit, complete with a tiny sequined skirt looking odd in Sirius' dirty and scarred hands.

"Oh look, it's you!" James called back, pulling down a creepy hogshead mask.

"Jamesie boy, look at this beauty! You'll have Lily crawling all over you if you wear this!" Sirius pulled a sixteenth century dress off the rack, only to even more excitedly dive back to grab a matching hoop skirt.

"Yeah, crawling to get away from me. Are you trying to get me punched?"

Sirius laughed, only to spot a pretty maid's costume and pulled it off the rack, "Found one!"

"Oh good. Now come help me find something, I think I'm drowning in flappers."

"You don't drown in flappers, Prongs, you make jazz hands at them."

James flipped Sirius off with a good-natured grunt before wandering further into the store, leaving Sirius shouting after him about some costume labelled 'sexy bunny'.

They discovered a corner with various hats and wigs, and Sirius instantly began pulling them down and placing them on his head over the Spider-Man costume, ignoring James' warning about catching fleas. James pulled down a bright green bob and pulled it on over his unruly hair, placing a tennis cap over the top and striking a pose.

"Am I fabulous enough for you now?"

Sirius, who had placed a long, pastel pink wig and a fedora on his head, turned to inspect his friend, "I still think you need that bathing suit."

"Spider-Man should never wear pink hair _and_ a fedora."

"How about blue hair and a top hat?" Sirius asked, putting on a curly blue afro and placing a bright, sparkly red top hat precariously on top, sending James his best 'tough guy' look that was completely lost to James due to the Spider-Man suit's hood.

"I mean, Spider-Man might be a pimp, but I don't think so."

James pulled on a curly, light-brown wig reminiscent of Remus' hair and looked up at Sirius with a perfect imitation of their friend's shy smile, "Do I look like Remus?"

"You're too much of an ugly git to ever look like Remus," Sirius replied easily before pulling on a bright red wig.

"Twenty points to Gryffindor, sugar, for all the se-" Sirius began, imitating Lily, only to get hit hard on the head with a sombrero.

"That's my girlfriend you prat."

"Remus is my boyfriend and I didn't hit you!"

"I'm telling him you didn't defend his honour."

"Hey I kind of called him pretty!"

James cast Sirius an amused sideways glance, only to be hit with a beret.

"Don't make fun of my boyfriend you cretin."

They continued going through the shop, James every so often pointing at a mask and informing Sirius that it looks like him while Sirius every so often draped a dress over his figure and posed, singing 'don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?' It was really only a matter of time before Sirius sent a number of dresses tumbling down when he accidentally broke the bar they were hooked on to, and they were forced to sprint away from the carnage to avoid detection.

"Oi Prongs! I found you a hot manservant costume!" Sirius pulled the costume off the rack and threw it at James before taking off towards the counter to buy his own maidservant's costume.

"That's not what we agreed it was called!"

They paid for their costumes with as little incident as possible when James Potter and Sirius Black were involved, which is to say that they left the store being glared at by a cashier over the amount of noise they were making, and were soon back on Absorpoth, the two costumes stored under the seat as they drove along the highway, making a quick stop along the way at a supermarket to buy a few kilos of grapes.

An hour after they had left the store, Sirius nudged his bike to a stop in between a small flat complex and a cheap liquor store, and quickly jumped off, Sirius replacing his bike helmet with his Spider-Man costume's hood before locking the helmets to the bike. They snuck through the flats as quietly as they could, only stopping when they were standing outside door 58 and knocking.

There was a disgruntled 'I'll get it' from within the flat, and soon the door opened to reveal a grumpy looking girl, her blonde hair cropped short in a pixie cut and her dark brown eyes flicking between both of them.

"Marlene the queen!" Sirius exclaimed, forcing his way into her apartment without so much as a hello.

"Please, do come in," Marlene McKinnon, who had already put up with too much of the duo in high school, said in monotone as James shoved past her, too.

"Dorcas, my woman! It feels like years, how was the weather in Hawaii?" Sirius ignored Marlene completely, sitting down on the couch opposite an oddly amused Dorcas Meadowes and a grinning Mary MacDonald.

"A lot nicer than here. I heard Gryffindor won the house cup while I was away."

"We did! Prongs cried."

"I did nothing of the sort!" James interjected as he sat down beside Mary, shooting her a friendly grin.

"We all know you cried, James, you're a big cry baby," Marlene muttered as she sat down next to Dorcas, shuffling into her lap as the dark-haired girl shifted to accommodate her.

James huffed, pushing his glasses up his nose in an attempt to look more impressively angry.

"Is this a social call or are you here for something? Cause we were about to start watching Dirty Dancing and you're welcome to join us," Marlene made a sound of outrage at Mary's suggestion, and was about to vocalise just what she thought of that suggestion when Sirius interrupted with a laugh.

"Actually, we just came here to ask if we could borrow your vacuum cleaner."

"Our… What?" Dorcas asked.

James and Sirius rolled their eyes completely in sync, and despite Sirius' eye roll being hidden under fabric the synchronised rolling of eyes was something they were known for doing and Marlene, Dorcas and Mary all simply knew that they had rolled their eyes together.

"Your vacuum cleaner. We need to borrow it."

"What for?" Marlene asked suspiciously.

"No reason!"

"Then no."

"Fine, we're pranking Remus."

"I'm still going to say no on the grounds that he's your boyfriend and I don't want to know what kind of weird stuff you two might get up to with a vacuum cleaner."

"If I tell you, do you promise not to tell Remus? Or his flatmates?"

Marlene sighed running a hand through her short hair exasperatedly before nodding. Sirius instantly stood up and squeezed into the gap between the tangle that Marlene and Dorcas had become and the side of the couch and began animatedly whispering their half-formed plan to her while Mary directed James to a storage cupboard where they kept the vacuum cleaner among other things.

"I wasn't going to ask, but what's up with the Spider-Man costume?" Dorcas asked when it was clear that Sirius had finished telling Marlene their plans.

"We're on a stealth mission, Dorcas! Any good stealth mission must involve Spider-Man to be successful!"

James chose that moment to re-emerge, holding a six-pack of cider while dragging the vacuum cleaner behind him.

"Thanks for the vacuum cleaner. And the alcohol."

"I never said you could grab the alcohol-"

"We're leaving now bye!" James said, grabbing Sirius' elbow and starting to drag him outside.

"Oi, give me back my alcohol!"

"I dropped ten pounds while trying to grab the vacuum cleaner, you can use that to buy more."

"I want my vacuum back unharmed, James!"

"Your precious vacuum will come back in the same state as it was when you gave it to me, don't you worry your pretty little mind," Sirius replied, picking up the vacuum cleaner and making quite a comical sight in his Spider-Man suit.

"For the love of God, don't quote Taylor Swift in our conversations," Marlene groaned.

"I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 22!" Sirius sang in the most exaggerated manner he possibly could before darting out the flat and closing the door just in time to stop a flying shoe from hitting his face.

"You really need to stop pissing off Marlene, mate, one day she's going to castrate you like a donkey and sell you on the black market."

"Yeah, yeah, we all know she loves me almost as much as she loves Dorca- oh hello Vance."

Emmeline Vance was the last of Marlene's flatmates, but unlike the other three hadn't really gotten to know Sirius and James until the year before, when Marlene organised a road trip during the summer which Sirius, James, Peter, Marlene and Mary could only remember in snatches thanks to copious amounts of alcohol. She had always seemed a bit wary of them since, and although neither James nor Sirius could fully remember why, they vaguely recalled an incident involving various degrees of public nudity and attempts at climbing flagpoles.

As it was, the dark haired and dark-skinned girl just nodded in recognition before walking back to her apartment, knocking on the door. Sirius and James looked at each other and quickly fled the scene as Marlene opened the door with a furious "What the fuck do you want now?!"

James was skipping as he led the way across the carpark back to Absorpoth, the six-pack of cider swinging casually at his side. Sirius, behind him, was jogging lightly to keep up while doing his best to carry the awkwardly-shaped vacuum cleaner in his arms. Sirius did his best to attach the vacuum cleaner to the motorbike before pulling on his helmet, letting James, who was still carrying his alcohol, slide on the bike, and pulling away from the parking lot, the drive to Remus' share house now underway.

They pulled up a few metres away from the share house and got off the bike, grabbing all the required objects from the under-seat storage. Together, they sat down on the pavement and, after exchanging a particularly mischievous look, began opening packages of grapes, carefully pulling each grape off it's stem and placing every small, green and red fruit into the vacuum cleaner's cyclone. Sirius, after a moment of hesitation, also began carefully removing filters from the vacuum to allow the grapes access to the main hose with a bit of coaxing. With another exchange of mischievous looks, they quickly reassembled the vacuum cleaner without its filters and, after spending a few moments packing the remaining kilo of grapes in Sirius' under-seat storage, they began to make their way to the share house, costumes in James' arms, vacuum cleaner full of grapes in Sirius' arms.

They made it to the front yard without any incident, twin looks of mischief on their face. Sirius gestured to sneak around to the other side of the house and after a nod of understanding from James they began making their way across the very, very small yard, snuck under the window that was to the side of the house, and crouched behind a particularly dense bush that took up a quarter of the space in the tiny back garden.

Sirius quickly shimmied into his maid's costume, fluttering his eyelashes at James as soon as he was finished while James pulled the pants of his costume over his tight jeans before quickly stripping himself of his shirt and hoodie and pulling on the black, button-up vest and a small black bowtie that completed his costume.

"My, Prongs, you'd be quite the looker if you didn't have such an ugly face," Sirius whispered teasingly, his grey eyes glinting with mischief.

"You're a prat. Get your hood on, Operation Lark must continue."

Sirius quickly zipped up his Spider-Man costume, and together they manoeuvred out from behind the bushes and began carefully approaching the small house.

It was a rather nice house, spacey enough that two people wouldn't get in each other's way too much although it's three occupants often did get in each other's way simply because of who they were, and with just enough couch space to comfortably seat another two people around the TV, although not quite big enough to throw a house party with more than seven people. The landlord was also nice, an oddball only known to them as Dobby who liked woolly socks and hats a bit too much, and he often came around to see how they were doing and offering to fix up any problems they had, occasionally bringing small snacks with him.

Sirius exchanged a look with James as he retrieved the spare key from where it was hidden inside one of Dobby's new woolly socks that swung from a tree branch, and with as little noise as they could possibly make, snuck in through the back door.

Sirius found the nearest power socket and plugged the vacuum cleaner in, nodding to James as he flicked the switch and walked back towards him. James handed him the hose of the vacuum, and Sirius pointed it forwards as they began to slowly creep through the house, James carefully holding the vacuum cleaner behind him.

As silently as they could while carrying a vacuum cleaner between them, they crept through the small dining room that was not only the most direct route to the back yard in the flat, but also the least used room in the house, and together they manoeuvred into the living room's doorway, where the three occupants were playing a rather violent game of Mario Kart. Peter was currently dominating Rainbow Road, being naturally gifted at video games, although both Lily and Remus appeared to have ganged up on him, Lily throwing as many shells in Peter's direction as possible while Remus did his best to elbow him in the side. Sirius had to contain a fond chuckle as Remus' character fell off the track after he delivered a particularly vicious elbow to the ribs.

Sirius held up his hand, so James could see his fingers, and slowly began counting down, bouncing on the edge of his toes in expectation.

A thumb went down, just as Lily succeeded in sending Peter off the edge with a shout of success.

A pinky went down, and Remus once again fell off the track.

A ring finger went down, and Lily leaned over and tickled the back of Remus' neck, making him shout out loud about cheating.

A middle finger went down, and Remus let out a cry of disbelief as Peter sped past Lily.

A pointer finger went down, and chaos erupted as not only did Remus hit Lily off the track with a shell, but Sirius and James let out a war cry as James turned the vacuum on to the 'blow' setting and let grapes loose all over the living room.

"JAMES FLEAMONT POTTER!" Lily roared as she paused the game and stood up.

"She used my full name!"

"Run for your life!"

"Padfoot you're sleeping outside from now!" Remus called after them, sounding much more amused than Lily did.

"This is why we don't live with you, you prats!" Peter managed in between giggles of laughter.

"We have a peace offering! Just don't murder us!" Sirius called from where he had leaped into a tree and scrambled up as high as possible to get away from the murderous red-head, despite her focus being mostly on James.

"It better be one hell of a peace offering!" Lily called up the tree.

"It is! Just get back in the house and we'll go get it!"

"I'm sending Peter after you to make sure you don't take off, you guys are cleaning up this entire mess when you get back here with what better be the best peace offering this world can give."

Sirius leaped off the tree, grabbing James' arm and sprinting back towards their motorbike, Peter appearing behind them just as they reached Absorpoth, his face as red as Lily's hair from laughter.

Sirius retrieved the remaining grapes from the motorbike, sending Peter into another fit of giggles.

"So here's the plan. Wormtail, you're going to act like nothing is wrong and Prongs, you're going to pretend to be sexy and woo Lily into forgiveness."

"What about you?"

"I don't need to pretend to be sexy, I just am sexy, it's a fact."

James rolled his eyes before shoving Peter forwards, following him back through the front entrance to the house. James leaned against the doorpost, a lazy, easy smile on his face as he looked at Lily.

"Straighten your jacket, draw attention to your abs, your face is too ugly to do it alone," Sirius whispered from where he was hiding behind James.

"I don't need your advice, I can woo my girlfriend without your help!" James hissed back, but still did as Sirius asked, trying to make it look as natural as possible before running a hand through his hair, the easy smile still on his face.

Sirius shook his head in amusement before pushing past him, handing Lily the bag of grapes with a mischievous grin before walking over to where Remus was lounging comfortably in an armchair, sitting in his lap and leaning comfortably against the armrest behind him.

Without saying a word, Remus shoved him to the floor.

"Remus! How dare you shove Spider-Man on the floor! No kisses for you!"

Remus just grinned at him, the sudden twinkle of laughter in his eyes distracting Sirius so much that he almost didn't realise Remus standing up, stepping right over the top of him, and walking over to Lily.

"Padfoot, don't you think that peace offering was in poor taste?"

* * *

It took them almost two hours to remove all the grapes from the floor, behind the couch and in various other places, some more savoury than others, although this was mostly due to a grape fight, which Peter, James and Sirius took part in. James was particularly disgusted to discover a grape in one of Peter's used boxers that had been left under one of the couches at one point, and had ended up throwing grapes at Peter until he finally got up and retrieved the offending underwear. Lily had mysteriously disappeared about five minutes into their cleaning effort, much to James' disappointment, only to reappear five minutes before they ended their cleaning. Remus, himself, did absolutely nothing but making a quip every so often, including a few choice ones about Sirius' arse both Peter and James wished they could unhear, however didn't hesitate to participate in the broom-sword fight that began when James whacked Sirius on the back for not doing enough.

They had all piled comfortably onto the couches as soon as the cleaning ended where they were now laying, sharing amongst them the ciders James had taken from Marlene's house, which Lily had reluctantly accepted as a peace offering after pouring the grapes they had tried to give her down James' back. Sirius had stretched himself out on the couch, leaning against the armrest with his arm around the back of the couch, and Remus had lain down comfortably on top of him, his head resting in the crook of Sirius' elbow and his long legs tangled comfortably with Sirius'. Lily and James had chosen a much less compromising position to sit in, luckily for Peter, deciding to cuddle on a blue bean bag, leaving Peter to sit all on his own as the fifth wheel on an armchair. James was delivering an impressively long rant about how he's going to single-handedly resurrect chivalry and that Lily should stop laughing because someday she's going to be proud of her boyfriend.

"Pads?" Remus muttered quietly to his boyfriend.

"Hmm?"

"You make a hot Spider-Man."

Sirius chuckled softly, running a hand down Remus' arm and gently playing with his fingers before sliding them between his own.

"You make one hell of a sexy broom knight yourself," Sirius replied.

"James they're doing the couple thing!"

Both Sirius and Remus simultaneously flipped Peter off, turning to flip James off as he grabbed the nearest long object – a broom, as it happens – and swatted at their feet.

"Get a room."

"What do you call this then, a forest clearing?" Remus retorted, not at all fazed, but James ignored him, launching into another spiel about aliens and football games.

Sirius was just starting to understand the odd conclusions James seemed to be drawing from UFO sightings around the world when Remus once again drew his attention away with a quiet mutter of "Sirius?"

"Yeah?"

Remus turned, his lips so close to Sirius' ear Sirius couldn't help the small shiver that ran down his spine at Remus' quiet whisper.

"I have a few more creative uses for a vacuum cleaner if you wanted to stick around."

"WE'RE STILL IN THE SAME ROOM AS YOU, YOU PONCES!"


End file.
